


May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

by cheeky_geek_m0nkey



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Hunger Games, Hunger Games AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:22:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5269526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheeky_geek_m0nkey/pseuds/cheeky_geek_m0nkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone asked for a Hunger Games AU....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“There has been a slight…rule change.” The voice rang out over the trees, echoed by the morning birds that signaled the end of an impossibly long night. Beca looked hurriedly at Chloe, then up to the sky, where the voice was ringing loudest. “The previous revision, allowing two victors from the same district has been revoked. Only one victor will be crowned. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor.” 

She hadn’t wanted this. Any of this, at any point. But she followed along - she said her lines, she ran her scenes - and somehow it brought her the chance to see her mother again. To see Jesse. 

The images of those she loved flashed in the blackness behind her eyelids, urging her muscles to tighten on the bow she was holding. It was instinct, nothing more. 

What surprised her was that there was anything thought at all in that moment. The fact that she even bothered to consider what she had to do was shocking, because she’d gotten so used to living in order to not die that thought, consideration, or deliberating wasn’t ever really in the process until  _after_ she acted. But looking at Chloe, with a smear of dirt on her right cheek and lips that were whiter now but still impossibly pink, she wasn’t so sure. 

Her first instinct was to survive. 

And her second was to sacrifice herself. Chloe had a home and a family too, one that relied on her for any source of brightness in her life, and, Beca thought, she wasn’t anything more than a castaway. Her mother would live because Jesse would take care of her, and after a year or two, no one would remember her name. She’d just be another tally mark statistic for the Capital. But Chloe….

Chloe was the light of the entire district. She woke up half the people perched in the center of town every morning when she sang, and people had come to associate even the smell of warm bread to the smile on her face. She was soft. She was  _liked_. Beca could see why, that was clear enough. Killing her would be wiping out the spirit of the district and making it even more dead-eyed and purposeless than it already was. 

“Go ahead,” Chloe said. Her eyes had taken on a darker hint, and Beca thought, somewhat ridiculously here in the arena awaiting her death, that it was fascinating what she could do with those things. They were weapons in and of themselves. “One of us should go home. One of us has to die. They have to have their victor.” 

Beca watched Chloe. She saw the completely genuine acceptance of the situation running off of Chloe in waves, and she thought about it.  _They have to have their victor_. Chloe had said it like it was impossible to dispute. Because it was. 

But Beca had learned something throughout the games. 

The Capital was a slave to their image. Without it, everything crumbled.  _They have to have their victor_ was exactly what they  _wanted_ them to think. But it wasn’t necessarily true, at least, not according to what Beca had experienced thus far. 

“No,” she started, shaking her head. It wasn’t logic or reason that brought her to throw the bow and arrow down, reaching into her pocket quickly. “No they don’t.” It was anger, mostly. Anger at life. At the situation and the people who contributed to it -  _all_ of the people who contributed to it. Anger at the impossibility of escape, and anger that she’d adhered for so long to what was expected of her and they  _still_ wanted more. Anger that they thought they had the power to tell her to snuff out Chloe’s light. “Why should they?” 

“No!” Chloe covered up the berries quickly with her hands, but Beca caught them. They were rough, cracked with dirt, and so different from her own - uncallused from the years in the bakery instead of out in the woods, hunting. They were beautiful in a way Beca could never hope to have. 

“Trust me,” she said, realizing how close she’d gotten to the redhead. She met the other girl’s eyes. There were things that needed to be said. Things that they needed to discuss. But that was impossible. So she spoke, instead, with her eyes. With a glance that she hoped against hope said it all. “Trust me.” 

Then she separated the berries, half in each of their hands, letting none fall between them. 

“Together?” Chloe asked. Beca was almost proud of the way her jaw was set, determined. She was as sure of this as she was sure of everything else in her life, and it was admirable, really. The blind faith that this woman had…

“Together,” Beca said. She wasn’t as sure that this would work, but then again, she didn’t know if Chloe even knew the plan. 

“One,” Chloe said, and Beca looked up. She tried to remember the sound of the man’s voice. She tried to look right down the barrel of it all. 

“Two,” she said, feeling Chloe reach out to touch her braid, tugging it slightly as she ran her thumb over it. It pulled her attention back. Back to Chloe, back to the berries, back to the way her heart was beating out of her chest. 

It was a game. It always had been. This thing between them was nothing more than the show that she put on. But she decided that were this not to work - if she ate the berries and poof, she was gone - she couldn’t imagine a better way to go than by looking into the striking blue of Chloe’s eyes. 

“Three,” Chloe said quietly, bringing her hands to her lips. 

There was a fraction of a second where Beca could feel the cold skin of the fruit on her bottom lip before the voice rang out again, like an audience shouting at a movie, “Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the winners of the 74th annual Hunger Games.” 

Beca’s gaze was frozen on Chloe’s. It always had been. She forgot how to breathe for what felt like the hundredth time that day, and she did the only thing her body was capable of doing. She pulled Chloe close, pressing her chin into the crook of the other girl’s neck. 

She had lived her whole life without liking hugs. But after days of killing children - after blood and tears and that stinging pain of all of it - Chloe still smelled like warm bread, and when Beca hugged her, she hugged back, with all the fervor she had left within her. 

It was, somehow, exactly the thing she needed. 

They made it. They  _made_ it. But that wasn’t what Beca was thinking, because she wasn’t capable of such a massive, significant thought at the moment. 

All she was capable of was smelling the bread from Chloe’s hair, feeling the other girl’s hands press her closer, and breathing. Once. Twice. Three times. 

They made it. 


	2. Chapter 2

It was unnerving, the crowd that surrounded the stage, but Beca always did well avoiding eye contact. Her drunken mentor, Amy, had told her it was a bad thing; she gave off the appearance of looking  _above_ the people instead of straight at them. She knew, of course, that Chloe was better at this. She was smiling, waving sweetly in a way that wasn’t allowed for the ceremony, but the audience loved it. 

Reaching out across the thrones, Chloe squeezed Beca’s hand. Her glance was lingering, squinty, and Beca recognized it from the games. It was the one that asked if she was doing alright. If she could last the night. 

She took a deep breath, nodding so slightly that she was sure President Snow didn’t see. The man was standing before them, a crown in his hands, and slowly, with an unspoken message, Beca stood. 

She never could handle heels or dresses, but when Aubrey stuffed her into the yellow gown with a sigh, there was a distinct glare that told her she wasn’t about to complain her way out of it. The dress was necessary, just as this ceremony was. Just as everything they would do for the rest of their lives were. 

In the moment between winning the games and coming home, Beca had childishly thought they’d made it out alive. She thought she survived, even bothered to say it to Chloe from the corner of the train. “We made it,” she said, shaking her head, and that’s when Chloe reached out for her hand the first time. 

“Yeah, we did.” 

Only, that’s not even close to what had happened, and now, under the gaze of President Snow, it was becoming apparent that the games hadn’t ended at all. Rather, they had entered another arena altogether. One with more risks, less reward. One that had the ability to hurt even worse, because this one contained her mother, Jesse, and all the people she ever loved. 

So she threw a smile to President Snow. It was tight and hardened, but it was all she could offer the man who forced her to murder people she didn’t even know. 

“Congratulations,” he said, his breath like blood. 

“Thank you,” Beca answered. Then, with hands that shook with old age, he reached up, pushing Beca’s hair off of her shoulder. 

“What a lovely pin,” he said. Beca shuddered, feeling the warmth of his breath with the chill that his hand left behind. 

“Thank you,” Beca repeated, “It’s from my district.” The president’s eyes drifted up to Beca’s, locking with hers. 

“They must be very proud of you.” 

It was not unlike the blow of the first cannon and the announcement of the games altogether. There was something about his words and the slight grin that accompanied it that indicated to Beca that this was the beginning of something that wouldn’t end simply. 

There was Chloe, though. Always Chloe, offering a hand to Beca when she saw some kind of struggle to get by. These moments happened randomly. In front of crowds and behind closed doors, in the middle of the night or day, just small instances where Beca would get lost inside the dangerous arena of her own mind and Chloe would know, somehow, that she needed a hand to pull her out. 

“What happens when we go home?” Chloe asked, her hand slipping out from under Beca’s as the districts passed by them on the train. Beca watched her when she talked, saw the way the faint pucker of a scar on her right cheek bounced with her words. It seemed to fit well with her freckles, somehow, but the contrast was still striking. Something so harsh with something so natural. It made Beca think about all the things that make a person a person. Chloe’s face was like a collage of all that had ever happened to her, and, like Beca, it had a lot to say. 

“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “Try to forget.” To tear away those scars and scabs that we don’t want visible. To make that collage beautiful again. Maybe. 

Chloe’s voice was squeaky, high, and genuine when she answered, pulling her hand even closer to herself. “I don’t want to forget.” 

It made Beca consider all that they had gone through. The nights weren’t safe, filled with the screaming of the hounds they had fought and those eyes that were left behind. So Chloe would hold her down, arms warm and strong from years of baking, and together they would try to stare in silence, praying that one day sleep would be possible again. She thought that Chloe would understand the need to erase all of the things that stained the space behind their eyelids. She thought that Chloe knew more than the people they stood in front of, waving as they cheered like they were heroes of some kind. 

Then, she realized, she did. Chloe didn’t want to remember the looks on people’s faces in the moment before they touched knife to skin - the tens of children who became monsters under the threat of death. She wanted to remember the nights in the cave, and the words shared between them that Beca had situated in the proper place for optimal emotional pull. Among other things, Beca guessed, because when she was able to look into the crowd and see Jesse applauding, smiling next to her mother who was crying without one ounce of temptation to hide it, she understood that forgetting wasn’t possible. 

They were different now. Inherently. There was something that forever separated themselves from the people that they used to be and from the people that they cared about when they were safe, comfortable,  _normal._ Forgetting wasn’t possible. Chloe’s want, then, seemed safe for now. 

The redhead looked at Beca, a gaze that Beca learned how to  _feel_ instead of seeing, and reached her hand out for what seemed like the thousandth time that day. She squeezed, and Beca smiled into it. 

 _I don’t want to forget_. Beca thought about it as she stood up there, hand intertwined with Chloe’s and hanging in the air. She wanted more. She wanted the memories and the future, together, and Beca didn’t know how she didn’t realize it until now. 

Amy snorted when Beca told her about how good Chloe was at playing the game, this act of pulling people’s attention and attachment. “Not as good as you’d think, but then again, you’re as blind as a bat when it comes to these things,” she had said, and Beca shrugged it off then, because Amy was a drunk who didn’t know very much about very much. 

Now, it was clear. Chloe wasn’t playing any games. She never had been. What she did in the arena was exactly what she would do here, in the safety of their district. Who she was in the arena was exactly who she was now. 

It was admirable, really, until it became painful. Not only as a stabbing realization that Beca had changed herself an overwhelming amount just to survive, but also because it meant that Chloe had expectations. Hopes. Wishes. For the two of them, together. 

She, like Snow, believed that it wasn’t over. It would never be over. 

Beca looked over at Chloe, breaking her gaze from the crowd to see the blue shine in the redhead’s eyes. 

“I’m here,” Chloe said, and Beca nodded slowly. That was it, she thought. That was just the problem. 

And yet, holding her hand tighter, it was somehow just the beginning of a solution, too. Or a cure, maybe. Or both. 

**Author's Note:**

> Flabbergasties.tumblr.com
> 
> ...
> 
> Hit me up, guys. Hit me up.


End file.
